Read Sweetest Dreams free: the opening chapter
A free sample of Sweetest Dreams: The Hushwillow Treasury of Gentle Bedtime Stories. About 17 minutes of reading.
Chapter 1: Animal Friends
At the edge of a small riverside village called Hushwillow, where the back gardens end and a low stone wall wanders along the grass, there is a wood. It is called Thistledown Wood, and it is a friendly sort of wood, full of ferns and foxgloves and paths that curl about like sleepy cats. And in that wood lived a hedgehog named Bramble.
Bramble was small and round, with brown prickles tipped with cream, a pointy pink-brown nose, and two bright black eyes like shiny blackberries. He was seven and a half in hedgehog years, which is quite grown up, though not completely. Around his neck he always wore a soft blue knitted scarf.
He had found the scarf last autumn, lying on the path at the Edge of the Wood, right by the stile. It had been damp and lonely and a little bit muddy. Bramble had washed it in Tumble Brook and dried it on a sunny stone, and ever since then he had worn it every single day. It smelled faintly of peppermint, and of something else too, something Bramble could only describe as "somebody small and kind." He did not know whose it had been. Sometimes he wondered.
On this particular morning, Bramble was trotting along the path toward Bluebell Bank, wrapped twice round in his scarf, when he stopped so suddenly that his nose bumped the ground.
There, lying across the path, was something enormous.
It was flat and wide and greenish-gold. It had pointy edges, and long lines running through it like rivers on a map. It was bigger than Bramble. It was bigger than three Brambles. And one end of it curled up into the air in a way that looked, Bramble thought, exactly like an ear.
"Oh, prickles," whispered Bramble.
He took one step back. Then another.
"It is an ear," he said to himself. "A giant's ear. And where there is a giant's ear, there is probably a giant." He began to count under his breath, which is what he always did when his tummy felt wobbly. "One pebble. Two pebbles. Three pebbles. Four."
The enormous thing did not move. It did not twitch. It did not listen. But that, thought Bramble, is exactly what a very sneaky ear would do.
"I need help," he decided, "and I need it quickly."
Dot the harvest mouse lived at the top of Bluebell Bank, in a round grass nest woven onto a tall, swaying stalk. She was tiny, with red-gold fur and a long curly tail that she wrapped around stems to hold on. When Bramble arrived, puffing, she was hanging upside down by that tail, drumming on her silver thimble with two little twigs.
"Bramble!" she cried. "Whiskers and wheat! You look as if you've seen a ghost! Have you seen a ghost? Was it a big one? Where?"
"Not a ghost," panted Bramble. "An ear. A giant's ear. On the path."
Dot flipped the right way up so fast that her whiskers wobbled. "A giant's ear! Show me! Show me right now!"
"I was hoping," said Bramble carefully, "that we might fetch Barnaby first."
So they did. Dot raced ahead, popping her thimble on her head like a helmet, and Bramble hurried behind, counting ferns. Down past the brambles (which were not named after him, though he liked to think so) and along the root bank they went, until they reached a round green door set into the earth. This was Burrowbank, where Barnaby the badger lived.
Bramble knocked. They waited. Dot hopped from foot to foot.
At last the door opened, slowly, and there stood Barnaby. He was big and slow and gentle, with a black-and-white striped face and a flowery apron tied round his middle. He had a spoon in one paw and a little bit of breakfast porridge on his nose.
"Now then," said Barnaby, in his deep, warm voice. "What's all this hurry?"
"A giant's ear," said Bramble and Dot together.
Barnaby blinked. He wiped the porridge off his nose. "Well," he said. "We had better go and see it."
The three friends crept back along the path. Barnaby did not really creep, because badgers are not built for creeping, but he did walk softly. When they came round the bend, there it was, still lying across the way, still curled up at one end.
"There," whispered Bramble. "Do you see?"
Dot squinted. Barnaby squinted. Then Barnaby gave a long, slow, rumbly chuckle.
"Now then, Bramble," he said. "Shall we lift it up together and take a proper look?"
Bramble did not much want to. But Dot was already tugging at one edge, and Barnaby was already holding another, so Bramble took a deep breath and took hold of the third.
"One," said Barnaby. "Two. Three!"
Up it came. It was light, much lighter than it looked, and it rustled. Underneath it there was nothing at all except a beetle, who said "Excuse me" and trundled away.
"It's a leaf!" squeaked Dot. "Bramble, it's a leaf! The biggest leaf in the whole wood!"
"A sycamore leaf," said Barnaby, "from the old tree by the stile. They grow very big, some years."
Bramble looked at the long lines running through it. He looked at the pointy edges. He felt his cheeks go warm under his prickles.
"Oh, prickles," he said. "I thought it was listening to me."
"It was a good thing to check," said Barnaby kindly. "Better to look than to wonder."
And just then, as if the sky had been waiting for them to finish, something went plip on the leaf.
Then plop.
Then plip, plip, plop.
"Rain!" cried Dot.
The friends looked at one another. Then, all together, they lifted the giant leaf high over their heads. Barnaby held the middle, because he was tallest, and Bramble and Dot held the edges. The rain pattered down on top of it, plip-plop, plip-plop, and not a single drop landed on them.
"It's an umbrella," said Bramble, amazed. "A giant's umbrella."
"A Bramble umbrella," said Dot, and giggled.
They sat down right there in the middle of the path, under the leaf, with their backs against a mossy root. The rain drummed softly. Dot put out her thimble at the edge, and it filled up drop by drop, and she drank from it and passed it round. Barnaby told a long, slow story about the time it rained on his birthday cake. Bramble listened, and counted raindrops, and found he did not need to count them at all, because he was not worried anymore.
After a while the rain grew softer. The plips came further apart. The air smelled green and fresh, like the inside of a cucumber. Somewhere far off, a blackbird began to sing in a low, sleepy way.
Barnaby's head nodded. Dot curled her tail around Bramble's paw.
Bramble pulled his blue scarf up and tucked it under his chin. It still smelled faintly of peppermint, and of somebody small and kind. He wondered, just for a moment, who that somebody was, and whether they were warm and dry somewhere too.
Plip, went the leaf above him. Then, a long while later, plop.
The green light under the leaf was soft and dim, like the light inside a shell. Bramble's eyes grew heavy. His breathing grew slow. He thought about giants, and how this one had turned out to be only a leaf, and how nice it was to be wrong about scary things.
"One raindrop," he whispered. "Two raindrops."
But he never did get to three.
He was fast asleep, snug between his friends, under the biggest leaf in Thistledown Wood, while the very last of the rain went plip, and then went quiet.
Dot's Thimble
High on Bluebell Bank, where the flowers nod and the grass grows tall, there is a round little nest woven out of grass and hung on a swaying stalk. It is the home of Dot the harvest mouse. And every morning, the very first thing Dot does is reach out a paw for her silver thimble.
Dot's thimble was the most useful thing in all of Thistledown Wood. It was a bucket for carrying dew. It was a hat for rainy days. It was a drum for marching songs. Once it had even been a boat, for a beetle who needed to cross a puddle and was too polite to ask.
But this morning, when Dot reached out her paw, it touched nothing at all.
"Whiskers and wheat!" squeaked Dot. She sat up so fast that her whole nest rocked. She looked under her blanket of thistledown. She looked behind her bundle of seeds. She looked out of the round door and all the way down the stalk.
No thimble.
"It's gone!" cried Dot. "My thimble is gone! Somebody find it! I'll find it! I'm going right now!"
And she slid down the stalk, wrapped her tail round the bottom, and was off along the path before the stalk had even stopped swaying.
The first animal she met was Bramble the hedgehog, coming out of his leaf pile with his blue scarf wound twice around his neck.
"Good morning, Dot," said Bramble politely. "You look in a hurry. Is something the..."
"My thimble's gone, have you seen it, it's silver, it's this big, it's mine, have you?"
"I don't think..." began Bramble.
"Thank you!" shouted Dot, and she was gone.
Next she met Barnaby the badger, sweeping the step outside the round green door of Burrowbank.
"Now then, Dot," said Barnaby slowly. "Where are you off to so..."
"Thimble! Gone! Silver! Seen it?"
"Well, I was just thinking," said Barnaby, leaning on his broom, "that when I lose a thing, it helps to sit down and..."
But Dot was already three ferns away. Barnaby shook his big striped head and went back to his sweeping.
Dot ran on. She asked a wood pigeon, who cooed something she did not wait to hear. She asked a family of woodlice, who all started talking at once. She asked a snail, who was still thinking about the question when Dot had already left.
At last, quite out of breath, she flopped down at the foot of a tall beech tree. "Nobody," she panted, "is ever any help."
"Help? Help with what? What help?" said a voice above her.
Down the trunk, in quick little jerks, came Sorrel the red squirrel. Her tail was fluffed up like a feather duster, and her ears had little tufts on top.
"My thimble," said Dot. "It's gone."
Sorrel twitched her nose. "Thimble. Shiny thing? Round, silver? I saw. Yes. This morning. Something shiny, pond-ways. Bobbing. Or was it yesterday? No. This morning. Pond-ways."
Dot stared at her. Then she gave a squeak so loud a blackbird flew out of a bush.
"Pond-ways! Thank you, Sorrel! You're the best squirrel in the whole wood!"
"Am I? Oh. Where did I put my hazelnuts?" said Sorrel, but Dot had already gone.
And as she ran, Dot thought, just a tiny bit, that if she had stopped to listen to Bramble and Barnaby, one of them might have helped too. But only a tiny bit, because she was running very fast.
Mirror Pond lay in a hollow in the middle of the wood, so still that the clouds could see themselves in it. Lily pads floated on top like green plates. And at the edge, under a flat grey stone, lived Gus the toad.
Gus was lumpy and olive-brown, with golden eyes and a wide, cross-looking mouth. He grumbled about the rain, and he grumbled about the sun, and he grumbled about the frogs who sang too loudly at night. Everyone in the wood knew that Gus was grumpy.
Dot skidded to a stop at the water's edge. And there sat Gus on his flat stone. And there, on top of Gus's lumpy head, sat a small silver thimble, tilted to one side like a very fine hat.
"My thimble!" gasped Dot.
Gus looked at her with one golden eye. "Hmph," he said. "Wet again. Everything is always wet."
"That's my thimble you're wearing," said Dot.
"Is it," said Gus. It did not sound like a question. "I found it floating. Floating, in my pond, bumping into my lily pads. A toad cannot have things bumping into his lily pads. So I fished it out." He sniffed. "Nobody came to ask for it."
"I'm asking now," said Dot. "Please may I have it back?"
Gus did not answer straight away. He looked out across the still water. A dragonfly zipped past. A leaf drifted down. It was very quiet at Mirror Pond, Dot noticed. Very quiet, and very empty.
She thought about how she must have dropped her thimble yesterday, when she was scooping pond water for her seeds. She thought about how Gus had fished it out and kept it safe. And she thought about how, all morning, she had been running so fast that she had not listened to a single soul.
So Dot did something that was very hard for her. She sat down on the bank. She folded her paws. And she waited.
"Gus," she said, after a while, "would you like to trade? I could give you a seed cake. Or a blackberry. Or a feather I found."
"Don't want a seed cake," grumbled Gus. "Don't want a blackberry. What would a toad do with a feather?"
"What do you want, then?"
Gus shuffled on his stone. His throat went in and out. He looked, for a moment, almost shy.
"It's very quiet here in the evenings," he muttered. "Not that I mind. I like quiet. Only sometimes. Sometimes a song would be all right. That's all. Hmph."
Dot's whiskers twitched into a smile. "A song! I know lots of songs! I know a marching song and a raindrop song and a song about a very fat caterpillar!"
"Just one," said Gus quickly. "A quiet one."
So Dot sang. She sang the slowest, quietest song she knew, the one her own mother used to sing about the wind in the wheat. Her voice was small and high and sweet, and it floated out over Mirror Pond, and the dragonflies hovered to listen, and the lily pads seemed to lean a little closer.
When she finished, Gus did not say anything for a long moment. Then he lifted the thimble carefully off his head and held it out.
"Hmph," he said. "That was all right. You can come back and sing another one. If you want. I don't mind either way."
"I will," said Dot. "I promise."
And she meant it.
By the time Dot climbed back up her swaying stalk, the sun was low and golden. She stopped by Burrowbank to say sorry to Barnaby, and by the leaf pile to say sorry to Bramble, and both of them said there was nothing to be sorry for, which made her feel warm all over.
Now she sat in her round grass nest at the top of Bluebell Bank. The thimble sat beside her, and as the evening grew cool, tiny drops of dew gathered inside it, one by one, until it was full and shining.
The stalk swayed gently. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Dot hummed. She hummed the quiet song she had sung for Gus, and far away, down by Mirror Pond, she was almost sure she heard a deep, croaky voice humming it too.
The bluebells closed their bells. The sky turned from gold to lavender to soft grey-blue. A first star peeped out.
Dot curled her long tail around the stalk, so she would not roll away in the night. She tucked her nose into her paws. Her hum grew slower, and softer, and slower still.
Back and forth went the stalk.
Back and forth, like a cradle.
And there at the top of Bluebell Bank, with her silver thimble full of dew beside her, Dot the harvest mouse fell fast asleep.
The Tortoise Who Was Last
In a wide green meadow, where the grass grew long and the buttercups shone like little suns, the animals decided to have a race.
It was not a race for a prize. There was no cup, no ribbon, no golden carrot. It was a race just for fun, from the old oak at one end of the meadow, all the way round the pond, up the little hill, and back down to the gate. Everyone was invited.
The hare was coming, of course, with her long legs. The rabbits were coming, three of them, all bouncing. The squirrel was coming, and the young fox, and a very determined hedgehog, and two field mice who planned to hold hands the whole way.
And Tobias was coming too.
Tobias was a young tortoise. He had a domed shell with patterns on it like a patchwork quilt, a wrinkly neck, and kind, sleepy eyes. He was not fast. He had never once been fast. But when he heard there was a race, he put his head out of his shell and said, "I should like to join in, please."
The hare looked at him. The rabbits looked at him. One of the field mice giggled, not unkindly.
"You know it's quite a long way?" said the hare.
"Yes," said Tobias. "I shall bring a snack."
On the morning of the race, everyone lined up by the old oak. The squirrel called out, "Ready... steady... GO!"
And off they went.
Whoosh went the hare, a brown blur through the grass. Boing, boing, boing went the rabbits. The fox trotted, the squirrel scampered, the field mice pattered, and the hedgehog rolled along like a prickly ball.
Tobias put out one front foot. Then the other front foot. Then one back foot. Then the other.
"Off I go," he said to himself, pleased.
By the time he reached the first clump of clover, the others were already halfway round the pond. By the time he reached the pond, they were already climbing the little hill. Tobias did not mind. He walked, step and step and step, and he looked around him as he went, because when you go slowly, there is a great deal of time for looking.
At the edge of the pond he heard a tiny, worried buzzing. He stopped. There, on a flat stone, lay a ladybird, stuck on her back with all six legs waving in the air.
"Oh dear," said Tobias. "Hold still a moment."
He leaned down very carefully and nudged her with the tip of his nose. Over she rolled, right way up, her red shell gleaming.
"Thank you!" she squeaked. "I've been stuck there since breakfast. Everyone kept rushing past!"
"I am not very good at rushing," said Tobias. "It comes in handy sometimes."
The ladybird flew up and landed on the top of his shell, and decided she would ride along for a while.
Step and step and step. Tobias went round the pond. On the far side, where the bank was shady, he noticed a smell. It was sweet and sunny and red, if a smell can be red. He followed his nose under a low bramble, and there, hidden among the leaves where no one running past would ever see them, grew a whole patch of tiny wild strawberries.
"Well I never," said Tobias.
He ate one. It was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. He ate one more. Then he decided to save the rest, and he set off again, step and step and step, up the little hill.
It was a long hill for a tortoise. The sun moved across the sky. The ladybird fell asleep on his shell. A bumblebee buzzed by and bumbled back again. Tobias watched a beetle carrying a crumb, and a spider spinning between two stems, and a cloud that looked exactly like a teapot.
At the top of the hill, he stopped to rest. And that was when he saw it: the exact moment the sky began to change. The blue at the edge of the world turned soft, and then softer, and then, right before his eyes, it blushed a deep, warm pink, like the inside of a seashell.
Tobias held very still and watched the whole sky turn rosy. He felt it was something very important, though he could not have said why.
Then he walked down the hill, step and step and step, toward the gate.
The other animals had finished the race a long, long time ago.
The hare had won, of course. The rabbits had come next, and then the fox, and the squirrel, and the hedgehog, and the two field mice still holding hands. But nobody looked very happy about it. The hare had a stitch. The rabbits were arguing about who had come second. The fox had a burr in his tail. The field mice had sore feet, and the hedgehog had rolled into a puddle and was very damp.
"Here comes Tobias," said the squirrel. "At last."
"Last by a mile," said one of the rabbits, but he was too tired to say it in a teasing way.
Tobias put his foot over the line. "I have finished," he said happily. "And I have had the most wonderful time."
The animals stared at him.
"Wonderful?" said the hare. "How can it have been wonderful? You were all by yourself."
"Not at all," said Tobias. "I had a ladybird." The ladybird woke up and waved. "And I found something. Would you like to see?"
So they followed him. The hare walked, because her stitch hurt. The rabbits walked, because they were too tired to bounce. And Tobias led them all, slowly, back round the pond to the shady bank and the low bramble.
When the animals saw the wild strawberries, they gasped.
"I ran right past here," said the fox. "Twice."
"So did I," said the hare.
They sat in a circle and shared the strawberries, every last one, and while they ate, Tobias told them everything he had seen. He told them about the ladybird stuck on her back, and the beetle with the crumb, and the cloud like a teapot. And he told them about the moment the whole sky turned pink.
"I didn't see that," said a field mouse softly.
"I didn't see any of it," said the hare.
The sun had gone down now, and the meadow was growing dim. The pink in the sky was fading, little by little, into lilac and then into soft grey. The animals lay back in the long, cool grass to watch the last of it.
The rabbits stopped arguing. The hare's stitch went away. The field mice let go of each other's paws at last and curled up side by side. Nobody said much. The crickets began to sing their slow evening song.
Tobias yawned a long, wrinkly yawn. He tucked in one front foot. Then the other. Then one back foot, and then the other. Last of all, very slowly, he drew in his head, until only the tip of his nose peeped out.
The ladybird snuggled down on top of his warm shell.
"Goodnight, Tobias," said the hare softly. "Next time, can I walk with you?"
But there was no answer, only a small, contented sigh from inside the shell.
Tobias had been the very last to arrive. And now, under the first pale stars, he was the very first one asleep.
The sample ends here.